Professor Drucilla Cornell, Co-founder of the African Institute for Global Social Thought

Professor Mabogo More, Co-founder of the African Institute for Global Social Thought

Professor Sampie Terreblanche, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stellenbosch University

To say that the police are using disproportionate force at the University Currently Known as Rhodes (UCKAR) is to understate the immense brutality and repressive tactics experienced by students and staff.

Task teams, ministerial committees, judicial commissions: these are just some of the bodies that have been set up to tackle South Africa’s higher education funding crisis since 2011. They’re headed by vice chancellors, retired judges, leading business people and in one instance, South Africa’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

On 19 October 1977 the apartheid government banned 18 organisations, including:

Black People’s Convention

South African Students Movement

Union of Black Journalists

Black Women’s Federation

South African Students Organisation

Soweto Teachers Action Committee

The Christian Institute

Soweto Students Representative Council

It is important to remember that the early Gandhi had little contact with Africans and did not understand their sensitivities.

The voice on the other side of the phone was crackling with fear:

“UFezeka lona. Lestory enesibhalayo asilona iqiniso. Amanga wodwa [This is Fezeka. The story you are about to write is not true. It is a total lie].”

The hysterical person went on to insist that Jacob Zuma had not raped her and if the Sunday Times published the story, she would sue our heads off.

After a long and rapid monologue in which she stressed that no rape charge bearing her name existed, she eventually let me get a word in.

THE South African higher education system, despite all the challenges that it faces, remains the envy of the African continent. Of the 16 founder members of the recently established African Research Universities Alliance, six are from SA.

Our universities attract students from across the globe and, in particular, from the Southern African Development Community. In 2013, 53,800 students from the region were studying at South African universities, with a further 11,922 coming from elsewhere in Africa.

Jeremy Cronin says the former President badly misread the global and indeed domestic conjuncture of the post-Cold War decade

Yes to the struggle against corporate capture, no to Mbeki nostalgia

It has been a turbulent two weeks at South African campuses as the fees issue re-emerged with vigour.

Universities have pointed fingers at the state, which has under-funded higher education for the past 20 years.

Establishing a Fees Commission is a waste of time.

It is self-evident that the average South African household cannot afford to send a child to university at an annual cost of R80000 – whether by going into debt or by some other means.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of the French student uprisings of May 1968 on the philosophy of the so-called post-68 generation, that group of politically awakened academics that included, among many others, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere.